


darling by the harbor meet

by VerdantMoth



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Related, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Pet Names, darling - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:21:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24158041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: дорогой beat into each bone of his spine, until all he is, emptied out and refilled, marches the land lost with a gun.дорогой he is, a monster laced in a dead man’s flesh. He’s gleaming silver and gun-barrel warm. When his boots crack the ice, the red sea spills before him like lovers songs in the moonlight.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	darling by the harbor meet

**Author's Note:**

> if дорогой actually does not mean "darling" i apologize.

“Darling,” Steve whispers by the edge of the coast. His voice sounds like waves crashing across the stones that built the harbor. 

“Darling,” Steve laughs, sticky like the cotton candy caught on his chin. Salty like the popcorn they drizzled in caramel, shared on the wheel. 

Bucky smiles at him, takes two ice-block hands in his own and spins them. 

“Darling, don’t go,” Steve is puffing, breathless like a choked up chimney, smokey like the ladies behind Sal’s, desperate like Steve’s Ma when they’re already late to Mass.

Bucky has to go, though. And Steve knows this. So Bucky swallows the sound, “Darling,” in a hundred different breaths, cadences of spring and summer, whispers of august, and the harshest of winter howls.

“Darling, please,” Steve is begging, knees raw and lips chapped on Bucky’s collarbone. 

“Meet me by the harbor,” Bucky promises. “By the harbor come Passover, and call me your Darling.”

“Darling!” Carried over the cracking thunder, dancing through the lightning. 

Darling a million shells exploding around him, the mud under his shirt and inside of his boots.

Darling, he clings to, darling darling darling.

-

“Darling,” Steve grins, voice too low and eyes too bright.

“It ain’t Passover,” Bucky says, “and this ain’t the harbor.”

But who gives two shits when Steve is in his arms and he tastes a little like salt and a little like mud and a whole lot like the American lie wrapped up in wool and doused in the blood of boys too young to be fighting.

He holds him close, holds him past pain and around the barbed wire. Holds him in sewage and smoke and a thousand different drills, but he holds him.

“This ain’t the harbor,” Bucky whispers. The tent flaps are loud, a thousand footsteps marching to hell, a hundred drums beating off rhythm. It’s too hot and it’s too cold and Steve fits him all perfectly and it ain’t quite Passover, so Bucky says his prayer of atonement and he licks into Steve’s mouth. 

He’s chasing the endearment, biting into the milky flesh and sucking every drop of hope and promise. 

“Darling, be gentle,” ‘cause it’s all different now. Steve’s big and important and he’s got people to show and bullies to chase. 

Bucky’s following in his shadow and it’s lovely, it’s okay, he licks the way Steve says his name now. Like trees felled in a forest, like the song of the last leviathan lost in the sea. Like a goodbye that hasn’t quite reached its end. 

“Darling,” Steve grits out, warm and wet and too pleased for his sinful reprieve.

“By the harbor meet,” Bucky tells his sleeping form. “By the harbor come Yom Kippur.”

-

Bucky doesn’t make it, but he never expected to, really. 

“Darling, no!” Steve weeps, lowers Bucky gently into the ever growing darkness.

“Darling,” carried calm on the blizzard that whites out his brain. 

“Darling, no!” plucked from his brain, mark by mark, ten lighting zaps straight to his nerves. 

He clings to it, the sound like ash and summer and lust and thunder. 

Darling carved into the gap of his left shoulder.

Darling shoved between his molars.

дорогой beat into each bone of his spine, until all he is, emptied out and refilled, marches the land lost with a gun.

дорогой he is, a monster laced in a dead man’s flesh. He’s gleaming silver and gun-barrel warm. When his boots crack the ice, the red sea spills before him like lovers songs in the moonlight. 

He ain’t a saint, he ain’t a prophet, he ain’t anything good anymore. 

But when the men made of lightning give him a moment, he stands by the sea. The water slaps against the water and it sounds all wrong, the caress to his ears. _“Darling, where are you?”_

Not here, not there.

-

“Bucky?” The word doesn’t fit, the way it puffs out, like smoke from a chimney burning in summer.

Bucky splits the bone and he’s confused because it feels like cotton candy caught on the chin and the blood splatter tastes like salted popcorn in autumn. 

“Bucky you were late,” but that is impossible. Bucky’s been standing by the sea for as long as he can remember, and following the song of the siren below.

Bucky cracks his knuckles again and again, but when they freeze him, when his nightmares are caught inside of his bones, he asks, “Darling, was I late?”

They carve him back out, empty his heart, a million burst of lightning caught under his skin. It burns, burns, _burns_ like the kiss of brass raining day and night under foriegn skies. 

_You are not your own, you live to serve. You are nothing, a weapon, you do as we say, you live as we command. You do not return._

He wants to return, but where too? And why? 

Bucky is waiting, but his name is not Bucky. He has no name.

The sea bites his ankles, begs to drag him under, but when he goes, he sees corn silk hair and freedom blue eyes, and pink lips like the petals of fairy beds. 

-

Bucky doesn’t want the nightmares of ice anymore. He doesn’t want skin stained in the blood of the mortals, and he doesn’t want the voices that laugh in his ears. 

He’ll burn them, burn all of them to ash. 

He’ll lick the ground, taste their marrow like rot. He’ll pick his teeth with their bones and he’ll stretch their tendons around his neck like the chains of old kings.

Bucky stays by the sea, stays by the rocks that stop waves breaking free. 

He is the stone, he stops the rage. 

The birds scream and the ocean weeps, but he _stays_.

“Darling, you waited,” Steve says against his mouth.

“By the harbor I waited,” Bucky grins back.

And he taste like rot and he taste like foam and he taste like the spit of the feral land beast, but he’s holding his darling tight in his arms, and he doesn’t even care that they’re seven decades too late, because “Darling” taste like sunshine and sugar, and like a night on a wheel and days spent under sheets. 

“Darling, you’re home,” Steve licks at his knuckles. “Darling you’re safe.”

It’s lies, all lies, but дорогой doesn’t care, because he stood at the harbor and now? 

Now he is saved.


End file.
